Serving Justice
by greyslostwho
Summary: A murdered judge causes Castle and Beckett to examine their own lives. Caskett.
1. it began with the rain

**Serving****Justice**

A murdered judge causes Beckett and Castle to examine their own lives.

One – it began with the rain

It began with the rain.

Maria Velasquez, minutes away from finishing her shadow night shift on the hotel cleaning staff, had always hated the rain. Where she'd grown up, in Colombia, the rain had smelt fresh, loosened the dirt from the ground, brought nature upon her, but here in New York, it had another quality entirely. It wasn't _clean, _she thought, and it made her somehow uneasy. There was something acrid to it; she flinched sometimes when it touched her skin. It made the sky hang grey over grey buildings and moods rise and fall like a pendulum. It beat against the window, trapping her inside, obscuring her view.

She was thinking about the rain, as well as what she could buy her son for his birthday, whether she was going to make the payment on the electricity bill that month, and what she had left in the refrigerator to cook for dinner, when she opened the door to Judge Humphrey's room, humming a melancholy tune under her breath.

Moments later, she stopped in her tracks, tune stopping somewhere in her throat, jaw clenching in fear.

Judge Humphrey was laid on the floor in front of the wardrobe, a pallor creeping across her skin, somewhere close to the colour of the rain soaked sky. Her eyes were wide open, glassy and staring, and her face was contorted in fear, mouth twisting in an unspoken scream.

Maria Velasquez, minutes away from finishing her shadow night shift on the hotel cleaning staff, ran from the room, screaming.

* * *

"Pick up your goddamn phone, Castle!" Beckett hissed into the receiver, pulling on her jacket with one hand, grabbing her badge in the other, the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder.

"You know, it probably wouldn't hurt you to go to one crime scene without him." Esposito mused, raising a suggestive eyebrow, making Beckett turn her eyes away. She sighed as the line clicked to Castle's voicemail for the third time.

"Castle! Where are you? We have a case… look, I can't reach you on your cell, so I guess you're asleep and you're ignoring the phone again because you think it's your alarm clock, but, look, if you get this, meet me at the Palm Hotel, we've-"

"I'll be right there."

Beckett spun, eyes connecting with Castle's. Castle, who was standing in the doorway, two cups of coffee in his hands, smiling at her.

"You're late."

"Sorry, Mother attempted to make Alexis pancakes this morning – she has a French final – and managed to set off all the smoke alarms in our building…"

Beckett gave a slight smile, taking the coffee from him, taking a long drag, her eyes drifting closed for a second, revelling in the taste of it, the caffeine zipping its way through her veins.

"So, what have we got?" Castle asked, as they took the lift down, heading out to her squad car, bracing himself without even thinking for anything crime could throw at them.

"We don't really know much, Jane Doe, middle-aged, we'll get something more accurate on that from Lanie, found dead in her room at the Palm Hotel¸ by a maid, she's not saying much, she's still in shock, but we've got something, the vic was here for a wedding apparently, so we'll have a whole crowd of people to ask from there…" she took a long sigh as she settled into the driver's seat, turning the key in her ignition, Castle just stretching his seatbelt around him. There was something strangely familiar about the case, something she couldn't put her finger on.

"Any idea on the method of murder… scratch that, any proof it was a murder?"

She rolled her eyes slightly, more to herself than anyone else, wondering when Castle had started saying exactly what was on her mind.

"We don't have much idea… the maid says there were no wounds, so I guess strangling or asphyxiation… and it's suspected murder because, according to the maid, there were bruises all down her arms…" She cocked her head to one side, glancing at him quickly, "Castle, I don't like it any more than you do that we don't know what the hell's going on with this case… I haven't had a bad case, not once like this, since before… you know…"

Silence reigned for a second, and she knew they were both thinking about it, on her behalf the sunlight shining through the trees that were suddenly above her, and those words coming out of Castle's mouth that she's still denying hearing. And on Castle's behalf, the way her bullet wound had felt between his hands, the feel of her blood spilling through his fingers, shouting those words out half like a mad man at the thought of the woman he loved slipping from beside him.

"I know." He said softly, although they both knew he didn't have to. Neither of them said another word all the way to the Palm Hotel, dwelling on their memories of that day she was talking about, both of them wishing they could shut it from their minds. Wishing they could never see it, never think of it again, but that wasn't the way. For either of them.

They reached the hotel and within minutes they were inside Room 46 on the third floor, and Jane Doe was laid out on the floor, eyes wide and her mouth twisted in some form of permanent scream, giving both of them the instant feel, despite not knowing anything more, that this was murder. There was something more to this than suicide; the two of them could both see that. And it would be minutes before they knew that, with Lanie already there, seconds before them, leaning over the body, already calculating everything she knew to work out exactly the manner of death for the woman laid before them.

Castle swallowed slowly, hanging back slightly as Beckett moved forward in the room. The woman who lay on the floor in front of him, somehow she was _prettier _than he expected. Not really looking her age, not really looking like she fit this. Somehow he found crime scenes like this harder than he used to, after the events of Montgomery's funeral, the feeling of Kate in his arms… half-dead Kate… There's something not so unfamiliar about murdered pretty women now, something that makes him realise how they're not invincible, however beautiful they are, however much someone has loved them. And he doesn't want that thought, because somehow it brings thoughts of Alexis in with it, and how she could be touched by any of the dangers the last three years have shown him. He swallowed, bracing himself against the woman laid on the floor in front of him for a moment. There were a lot of things he was, but defeated wasn't one of them.

"Strangulation." Lanie said, without even looking up from the corpse, "And I'll have her PM to be sure when I get back to the lab, but I'd say her time of death was just over 24 hours ago, between six and eight yesterday morning, dependent on her state of rigor mortis…"

Beckett gave a tiny nod, unable to bring herself to give any more acknowledgement to her friend, still working on counting the breaths that were travelling through her system, still physically having to swallow the panic. She hadn't handled a case like this yet, not since someone almost shot her life away, and she was unable to quell the slight fear that it had made her less of a cop. The things that used to be second nature to her, understanding a victim, absurd guesses that always turn out to be true, a preparation slightly before something happened, she didn't know what she would do if those had been shot away from her as well. She wasn't sure who she was if she wasn't Detective Kate Beckett.

"There's no sign of a break in," came suddenly from across the room. A young cop was talking, she looked barely old enough to be out of high school, Kate thought, remembering for a second how she's been when she'd just qualified, desperate to solve only one case. One case she still hadn't got close to solving. "She must have known her killer. Or it must have been a member of the hotel staff… with a key to get in…"

Kate sighed slightly. There was something easier about a case with motive, a killer that knew the victim, being able to place some blame on something the victim had done or known, no matter how insignificant it was. However cruel it still was, however difficult, she found it far easier that not having an answer, not having a reason. There was something too familiar about that, something she wasn't ready to face yet. She ran a hand tiredly through her hair, wondering what it meant that the crime scene she'd been in for about twenty minutes felt like it had been there all day. She sighed. She was tired already, and the sun had barely risen.

"I've got some ID." One of the CSUs was saying from where they had been raiding the pockets of her coats and found a wallet in one of the pockets of her jacket, "Her name's Natasha Humphrey, she was born in 1976…" he gave a slight sigh, "I know her face on here, Detective, something about her on the floor down there made me unable to recognise her, but she's… she's a judge just outside the city…"

_Jesus, a judge. _Beckett took deep breaths. Someone like her, someone slightly too involved in everything criminal that went on, and to top things off, she now had a practically infinite number of possible culprits. Being a judge, there were quite a few people you'd put away for however long that didn't have that much of an ability to forgive you. You had an almost infinite number of motives.

Someone came through the door into the hotel room just behind Castle, a young member of the homicide squad. "Detective?" she said, and she sounded almost unsure that what she had to say was worth listening to. "I've checked all the hotel CCTV, and it's not that helpful, the hotel only has CCTV on the elevators, nothing on the corridors… anyway, the victim came up to her room not until 2 in the morning, and there's no one on the elevators over the night who doesn't look like they're either dressed for the wedding and some hotel cleaning staff… there's about thirty people coming up from the wedding, but none of them are on their own… it doesn't give us anything…"

Beckett gave a tiny sigh as she nodded to the young cop, hardly able to even voice her thanks. Everything about this case was getting more and more complicated by the second. Everything was getting seemingly more and more familiar, more and more bizarrely like her. She sighed. Something told her finding an answer about Natasha Humphrey wasn't going to be the easiest thing in the world.


	2. on the road out of the city

Two – on the road out of the city

"Beckett, you might want to sit down." Ryan warned, and she scoffed lightly, her and Castle back in the Precinct now, a slightly backward wave of confidence telling her she could defeat anything, she'd have the answer to this case soon.

"He's not joking, Beckett. Sit down." Esposito said slowly, and something about the way he was narrowing his eyes made her suddenly aware of everything around her, prepared. She took a deep breath, a large swallow, and sat down.

Ryan started then, something unsure about his eyes, something making her already expecting the worst. "Natasha Humphrey had a nineteen year old daughter. Her name's Rachel." She noticed him watching her for a second, but there was something about her that couldn't take the information she was being given in, there. There was something about her that morning that was letting it in one ear and out the other, something stopping her from drawing all the hideous parallels that were already falling on Castle, who had turned almost grey and was taking a seat as well.

"She had her in high school, and she's never been together with the father since as far as we know, and Rachel lives with her father… that's an Andrew Dean, he's got no priors, neither of them have…"

"And they don't know yet?" she half-whispered, strangely finding that although she could tell herself she wasn't reacting to this, there was something abnormal about her voice. Esposito was shaking his head and she took another deep breath, suddenly knowing that what she was about to do was going to be the hardest thing she'd done since the shooting, something that would really test how well she could hold together nowadays. "We'd better get down and tell them." She murmured, and as Ryan was about to argue, about to suggest he do it for her, she put her hand up, silencing him. Somehow this was something she wanted to be able to do, she wanted to prove to herself she could hold out through it.

Esposito looked for a moment as if he was going to say something anyway, but he didn't, and slowly he and Ryan moved from the room, going on to look further into Natasha Humphrey's murder, to look into all the wedding guests, to try and find a suspect. She sighed slightly, and Castle moved slightly close to her, a thousand questions in his eyes, and she had to swallow for a moment, those words she was lying about hearing racing suddenly through her ears, those words she remembered from seconds before she'd lost all contact with the world for hours.

_I love you, Kate._

She forced a smile onto her mouth and turned to look at Castle. "I could really use you coming with me…" She whispered so quietly it was almost inaudible, for moments no lies, no pretences, nothing on her face but an honest request that he come with her.

"Of course." It was almost as quiet as her words, as if he was hoping that the conversation would go somewhere else, but she smiled and gave a nod of thanks, and she was walking towards the door, grabbing her coat from the peg, not making contact with his eyes again. Because she was frightened, she frightened herself saying something like that, because she wasn't sure she knew what his eyes would say to her in the next moments, and that she would be able to handle it. She still had a long way to come, with what was between them, she wasn't ready for any sign of commitment, she wasn't even ready to admit to herself quite how easily she could read what was in his eyes.

* * *

Between them in the car there was mostly comfortable silence, after Castle had read some of the file to her.

"There's Rachel Dean, nineteen, and Andrew Dean… he's a violin teacher at the local middle school… apparently Andrew and Natasha were friends at high school… there's nothing here about them ever being together either before or after Rachel was born… she must have been a one-time accident by the looks of it…"

Everything anyone said about the case just seemed to make it a little bit harder.

"Anything about Rachel, Castle?

"Nothing here, really, other than she's in college…she's on her holidays at the moment, and she's studying to become a teacher…"

And something about her looked like a teacher when she answered the door to them, smiling at them, and then the expression of horror that they both knew all too well, the dread of what you sort-of knew was coming as Kate showed her the badge. She was tall, thin, built like she'd been slightly stretched, Castle supposed, with the way she was tall and so slim; she had long blonde curls cascading down over her shoulders, and at first the smile on her face was wide, her expression inviting, until she realised who they were and the dread started to cross her face, everything started to change.

"Dad!" she called up the stairs, her voice shaking, as if she knew what they were going to tell her in minutes. "Come down here now!"

There was something friendly-looking about the man who came down the stairs as well, he was slightly younger than Castle had expected him to be, slightly younger than him even, and he was the father of a daughter a few years older than Alexis.

"Please sit down, Mr Dean, Miss Dean." Beckett said slowly, something in her tone already ringing alarm bells in their heads… they both took their seats quickly, and Castle wasn't sure whether it was out of instinct or not, but Rachel leant out and took Andrew's hand, grasping it lightly.

"This morning we found the body of your mother, Rachel. Natasha Humphrey. In her hotel room where she was staying, just inside New York City…"

Rachel had gone grey; her skin changing shade at some ridiculous rate, Andrew had taken to focusing on the coffee table, refusing to break eye contact with it, refusing to meet the eyes of anyone in the room. The only thing he seemed to be able to move was his hand, tightening his grip around Rachel's fingers.

"Was she murdered?" escaped from Rachel's mouth, so quiet they could barely hear it. Beckett gave a small nod, something sad running through her eyes that Castle could read regardless of the parallels she still hadn't brought herself to draw.

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Miss Dean, Mr Dean." She said quietly, looking from one of them to the other, waiting for the moment that she was so familiar with, for one of them to snap and go mad across the room, unable to comprehend what they were being told. But there was nothing, Andrew wouldn't even meet their eyes and Rachel looked calm. Concerningly calm, even.

Then Rachel's voice came over the silence, like she was trying to offer them a few useless threads to a story that would now never be completed, "She was in New York for Kathryn's wedding. She was… she was Mom's best friend at high school…" she gave a small smile in her father's direction, "Other than Dad… it was Kathryn's wedding last night, did…. Did she make it to the wedding?"

"She did. The last thing we see of her is on the CCTV in the elevator from the wedding at 2 in the morning…"

"… she was taking a week off work… she never does that, she loves her job… Dad and I had to practically make her take a week off… she hasn't taken any holiday in years…"

"She loves her job." Was the first thing Andrew said, something different about his voice, like the truth of what they were telling him had brought some kind of irreversible change. Then he shook his head slowly, almost laughing at himself. "Sorry, she loved her job." He said, and the grief was easily readable in his tone, everything was so raw, so difficult. Like he was even struggling to get a sentence out, with everything that had happened. He sighed, and took his daughter's other hand in his own, giving her another squeeze, almost as if squeezing her hands would make any difference to this terrible situation.

"I know it's hard for you right now… but have either of you got any idea whether she was seeing anyone? Were there any men recent in her life?"

They looked at each other for a moment, as if they were trying to reach an answer, as if they were trying to reach something to give the Detective something more to go by. Rachel sighed slowly, and Beckett could identify well enough with the situation to read from that expression on her face that she was taking the second simply to visualise her mother, that second to pretend that this was all some sort of bad dream. She was more than familiar with that.

"I don't think so… there was no one she ever talked about… work was her one priority in the world, always, with everything…" Tears welled in the girl's eyes, and she looked at the two of them with an expression of painful honesty. "I used to get angry, I used to shout at her, say she prioritised her work over me, especially when we fought. I mean… what daughter of two single parents spends her whole life living with her father… her work was always the top of her list, and sometimes that would bother me, when I thought about it too hard… Oh Dad, maybe I had too many goes at her, maybe I shouted at her too much…" She trailed off, unable to stop the tears pouring from her face now. Andrew did nothing outwardly audible, simply curved his arm around her and tucked her into his side tightly, as if it was the best offer of anything he could give.

Beckett sighed. There was something about this case that was getting to her… maybe more than it should.

* * *

Just as Beckett was about to pull out of the road in her car, her phone started buzzing incessantly, as if it was trying to pass some form of message on to them itself.

"Detective Beckett."

"It's Ryan… we've been looking into all of the criminals Judge Humphrey put away, seeing if any of them have served their time and finished in the last few weeks… cos if that's not a motive, Beckett, I don't know what is… anyway, there isn't anyone who's just been let out… the most recent con she put away to get let out was six months ago… and he moved to Tennessee before Christmas… so it seems unlikely…"

"No luck then…" she sighed slightly, swallowing and running her hand through her hair.

"Well, we got something… I don't know if it's anything, but I think it's saying something…"

"What is it?"

"A rapist she put away a decade ago… he's been out for two and half years… but this Harvey Perry, he… he tried to strangle one of his victims…"

Her words caught in her throat for a second, and the rush of hot air rushed over, she had never been able to put it into words, but it was that feeling she had when in some unexplainable way she knew something had to be investigated further.

"Find him. Bring him in. We need to look into this."

******Hope you're still enjoying, I'd love feedback :)**


	3. wearing an ordinary face

Three – wearing an ordinary face

Harvey Perry made her skin crawl the moment she saw him through the observation glass. He was older than she'd been expecting, somehow, but she supposed if she thought about it hard enough it did make sense… it had been a decade ago Judge Humphrey had put him away. Anyway, he was in his sixties, and he unnerved her because there was something about him that made him look personable, there was that smile on his face that would make her talk to him on a bus, something about his appearance that made him far too trustworthy without even knowing him. Especially considering what he had done. A shudder ran down her spine, it had been three rapes that he'd been convicted of, and somehow she suddenly understood how the girls had been tricked; how he was someone it was all too easy to trust. There was something far too unsettling about seeing him sat there, Castle already sat opposite him in the interrogation room, staring him out. This man, that looked so ordinary, but was so rotten underneath. She sighed. Now wasn't the time to dwell on that, at all. She disallowed herself another thought on the matter, and was walking into the interrogation room, head held high, just seconds later.

"Mr Perry, you are being questioned on suspicion of the murder of Natasha Humphrey-"

"I don't know no Natasha… and I think… I think this is rude…" he had the voice of a personable old man as well, a voice that talking to should have flowed easily with.

"I think you do." Beckett said sharply and smacked down the picture of Natasha Humphrey on the PM table, "She was the woman that put you away…"

Harvey Perry stared down at the photo for a moment, no words leaving his lips, but a hundred expressions running through his face. And he was good, good at keeping up this appearance, even though Beckett knew exactly who he was, exactly how frozen his soul was, quite how cold he could be. If she hadn't have known better, if she hadn't have known his precise disgusting nature, she would have thought he was emotionally affected by it… she would have thought the picture of the dead body in front of him was turning his stomach.

"I never knew her first name…" were the only words that crept out of his mouth in the end, after minutes, and his acting was beginning to chill her – there was something almost mournful in his tone.

Beckett didn't have time for any of this, and she didn't like the way his pretences were messing with her mind, so she turned it around again, bringing her own control into the forefront in the interrogation room again, falling back onto being more comfortable.

"You're looking at a better motive for murder than any I've ever seen, Mr Perry, so you better start tal-"

"How could you accuse me of that?" he interrupted, pulling an affronted look across that face, "I've gone straight now… I've been straight ever since I got out… I work in a Davy Plumbers now… down in Queens… you can call my boss, if you want proof…"

"We will be doing that, Mr Perry… did you see Judge Humphrey on any occasion after that court case?"

He was shaking his head slowly, and if she didn't know better she'd have read incredulity, an inability to consider that he was possibly guilty of this crime.

"No… I never blamed the Judge anyway… she was…" and this was when the smile came on his face Beckett saw immediately would have been the expression his rape victims saw, something that suddenly spelt out predator, "…easy on the eyes, Judge Humphrey… I didn't blame her… I was tossing myself off at night over her… she was a pretty one, that one… quite like you, Detective…"

Beckett felt the nausea rise in her throat, and for a moment, the level of hatred she felt towards herself was incredible. Because this man, this disgusting man, had managed, if only for seconds, to render her speechless. And that wasn't something people were able to do easily at all. That wasn't something she let go.

Before she had a chance to even think about the points Harvey Perry had just won against here, you could practically smell the rage coming off Castle, and he was standing, his fist clenched, as if was ready to strike the monster in front of them for the words… and she didn't even think; she grasped her hand around his and pulled him back down, running her finger in semicircles on his hand under the table, in their own privacy.

Like she was some sort of reassurance, like she was some sort of reality check that she was alright, that his words were simply words and nothing more, she kept her hand on his, not even considering moving it.

* * *

She didn't bring it up, she's not that kind of a girl, and it was Castle who brought it up in the car over to medical examiner's office to talk to Lanie about everything in this case.

"I'm sorry." His voice was low, like he wasn't sure if he was talking to her or just to himself, "it's thinking about the kind of man he is… and the way he looked at you…"

She glanced at him as they stopped at the lights, and he was trying to hide his disgust, but he was flinching, swallowing down the disgust.

"It's alright, Castle…"

He looked at her slightly incredulously, "Really?"

That was something he could do, as well. In situations like this one, where everything seemed completely hopeless, he could make her smile. "Really." She finished, and in a spur of the moment, without even thinking, reached out and covered his hand with hers for a second.

For a moment their eyes met, and Beckett found suddenly she had a thousand things to say she'd never said, and from his expression he was thinking the same thing… he had those unspoken words, too.

Then the lights turned green, and her hand was gone, and the car was moving, and if Castle didn't know better he'd suspect the whole thing was a dream.

* * *

"I was right on the time of death… between six and eight in the morning…. And she put up a good fight…" Lanie said, sighing as they walked into the PM room. Beckett returned her sigh, seeing the violent bruises all down the victim's arms, and the shade of grey her neck had turned. "She really did, Kate, she fought the killer as hard as she could… we don't know, but it's possible she made scratches on the killer's arms…"

Beckett raised her eyebrows. Something like that was perfect, particularly when the case was this difficult, this close to home.

"You got any DNA?"

"I'm running what was under her nails, and it looks like there's some human skin in there… I'll let you know when I've got a result…"

Beckett almost let a smile creep onto her lips – if they managed to get the DNA, and it alerted something in the system, it would make the case at least twenty times easier. This was the kind of thing she always wished for in nearly every case, and that she never got. She was about to say something back, and she could see from Castle's face there was something excited behind his eyes, when her cell phone rang, breaking the moments of silence.

"Beckett."

"It's Ryan. I've got two things…" she heard a deep breath, "Perry alibis out… he was working a job in Queens this morning, goes from five til ten… so he's all clear, as much as I want to lock up the guy… and we've interviewed those that are still in town from the wedding… both the bride's parents and the groom's brother said they saw the vic on the night of the wedding arguing with one of the bridesmaids…"

"And who was she to Natasha?"

"It took us a while to find it out, but turns out she was one of Natasha and the bride's friends from high school… a Louise Monroe…"

Beckett took a deep breath.

"She still in town?"

"She takes a train out this afternoon… we can get her in…"

"I'll be back at the Precinct in…" she checked her watch, "Half an hour? Anytime after then? And don't arrest her; keep it friendly, we want to catch her off-guard if she's got anything to do with it…"

After the conversation, she turned to Lanie and Castle, who were both looking over at Natasha's body in some sort of bizarre fascination.

"Perry alibied out… it wasn't him… but we've got someone else for questioning… we've gotta get back to the Precinct, talk to this friend from high school, she was apparently arguing with her last night… You got anything else for us before we leave, Lanie?"

Her friend shook her head slowly, and Castle's face had turned a slightly lighter shade of pale, at, Beckett assumed, the thought of Perry wandering the streets, a free man. There was something in him, the way he talked, what he had done before, the way he'd looked at Beckett… to Castle he was some sort of time-bomb, someone you should always be paranoid was on the street.

"No…" Lanie frowned, "I'll call you and let you know if we get anything on the DNA the moment something comes through…"

Beckett and Castle were already walking for the door, heading for someone else to question, more questions to answer. "Thanks… let's hope it's sooner rather than later…"


	4. a memory stirs

Four – a memory stirs

After the interrogation of Harvey Perry, Louisa Monroe seemed liked someone ridiculously easy to work with in the interrogation room… someone far too honest looking, far too normal. She was a doctor, had been for years, and she wasn't just your average doctor either, but a world-class neurosurgeon. There was something about that that gave Beckett the feel almost instantly that a woman that spent her job preserving life, protecting life; would be unlikely to have ended one. But she'd seen stranger things, and she never assumed anything, so she was sat in front of Louisa in the interrogation, ready for anything to be thrown at her.

"We've got more than one witness that saw you arguing with Natasha last night, Dr Monroe… got any explaining that to do?" she asked, her voice still calm, still delivering something not unfriendly, still trying to keep the woman feeling safe in the environment they'd put her in. Sometimes she had a feeling about the easiest way to get the truth out of someone, and in this situation it was keeping Louisa comfortable… keeping the suspicions about her from her, maybe making her slip on something she was saying, give them the evidence they needed.

The woman opposite her took a deep sniff and wiped her eyes fiercely, seeming to be setting her jaw before speaking.

"I was drunk…" she sighed, "I made a nasty comment at the table… I was sat with Natasha… and she bit back…" she looked off to the side, staring into thin air. "I should have remembered that, from high school… Natasha was never one to take someone insulting her…"

"What was your comment?"

"I can't remember exactly… I had too much to drink, I don't get to drink very much; I'm usually on call… it was something about motherhood… I think I said something about how Rachel was practically raised by Andrew… I'm infertile, and a baby's all I've ever wanted… and I've never been able to understand that… he brought that accidental baby up… when she was younger Natasha hardly had any interest in her…" she takes another deep breath, "… she never appreciated what she had, Natasha, she never saw that that was something beautiful, that accidental baby she didn't want anything much to do with… and it made me mad…" she looked slightly ashamed then, hanging her head a little, "… I say a lot of what I think when I'm drunk… I'm not the nicest person… Anyway, Natasha and I had an argument, and Natasha went upstairs… said she'd had enough of the evening – I think that was the last anyone saw of her…"

There was silence for a moment, Louisa staring ashamedly down at her hands, and Beckett, without even thinking, found herself looking into Castle's eyes, trying to catch how he read the situation, before she realised what she was doing and put herself in check almost instantly.

She knew the risks it held, and she would never do it fully, but there was something about Louisa Monroe that said to Beckett she wasn't the killer. She would always test it, she would always rule someone out completely, but sometimes she just had a feeling someone wasn't guilty, she read suspects well, she worked incredibly well in the interrogation. There was something about her, and maybe it was more than something, maybe it was more like a hundred things together, her job, the way she spoke ashamedly about the way she'd been to Natasha on her last evening, something inexplicable Beckett could read in her eyes.

"Would you provide us with a DNA sample, Dr Monroe, to test against the DNA we've found under Natasha Humphrey's fingernails… to rule you out?"

And that was the thing, in the end, that had Louisa Monroe bursting into tears, putting her head in her hands, shaking her head almost hopelessly at herself.

"You… you think I could have been Natasha's murderer?" she half-sobbed, "I'm…. I'm not that kind of person… I was drunk, I was rude, I was horrible to her in her last hours, and I'll always regret that… but I never would have hurt her, not physically. I never would have done that…"

"Dr Monroe, will-"

"I'll give you my DNA." She interrupted, an iron mask descending over her features, "So you can realise ever suspecting me of something that terrible was a mistake… Detective Beckett, it was a long time ago now…. But we were good friends in school, Natasha and I… I would never have hurt her…"

Beckett gave a nod, a small smile, "It's to rule you out, clear your name. And then you won't have to worry about it anymore…"

* * *

When Beckett and Castle got back to her desk, there was someone sat there, someone with long blonde hair and a frightened, looking younger than it was face, and an expression that Beckett had become all too familiar with for so many years of her life, that expression of longing for an answer. Rachel Dean gave the pair of them a small and half-hearted smile as they walked into her line of sight.

"I came… I came to ask you to try really hard to find whoever did this to my mother…" she started, and her voice was barely more than a whisper, her eyes filled with tears, "… someone ought to pay for something that bad… Dad and I… we'll be paying for our whole lives, in grief… and I want her back, and I'll never get her back… there needs to be someone to answer for something like that…"

And Castle watched, as if in slow motion, Beckett's face turn ashen pale, and her left hand grip the side of the desk, the whole situation far too familiar, far too reminiscent. It wasn't even as if she could offer her own story, with an ending that gave Rachel something she'd want… because she might have known more about her mother's murder now than she had for years, but she still didn't know all of it… she still didn't know everything… He could see her gritting her teeth, and he had known her long enough and could read her well enough to know that she was quelling nausea, she didn't have the stomach to bring words to her lips for a few minutes.

"We're trying our very best, Rachel." He said quietly, "Whole teams of us… and we're getting somewhere, we're getting there… Beckett… she lost her mother like this… she feels for you, she'll make sure we find whoever did this…" he swallowed, that was a liberty he'd taken, telling Rachel Dean about Johanna's murder, and he wished Beckett would meet his eyes, so he'd know if he'd ruined countless things or done something acceptable, but she wouldn't. She seemed to be finding the clear sky out of the window endlessly fascinating.

"Thank you." The girl whispered, and she stood up and walked away before either of them could come up with another word.

Beckett's eyes slid across slowly to meet his, and he couldn't help thinking for a moment how well he knew her now, to read exactly what she was thinking in those eyes. She gave him the tiniest, most solemn smile.

* * *

"Beckett." She answered her phone.

"It's Lanie… Louisa Monroe's DNA cleared… it's not her… but the DNA flagged someone up… a Ted McGarvey, his prior's nothing major, he punched a guy outside a bar last year… other than that we haven't got anything on him… he works in maintenance in the hotel, though, he would have been able to get access…"

"Brilliant." After Rachel Dean's plea for answers, her voice was slightly harder, her brow slightly more set. She needed to close this case and make someone pay, sooner rather than later. "Bring him in."

**Thanks for all your feedback so far, it's been lovely... keep it coming.**


	5. the worst of tragedies

Five – the worst of tragedies

The man sat in front of her looked completely normal, though there was something on his face that was telling her something, as if he'd completely given up, something like that. Ted McGarvey, 54, a handyman in the hotel. The man who's DNA had found its way to under Natasha's fingernails, and Beckett was going to find out why. There was something about this case, she assumed how similar it was to Rachel as Johanna's had been to her, there was something that meant she was going to close it. She might not be able to close her own mother's, but she was going to give that other nineteen-year-old the answers she never had, the closure she's still looking for. She's not going to let Rachel devote so many more years of her life to it, as she has.

"Mr McGarvey, I'm going to cut right to the chase… would you like to explain to us how your DNA has found its way to being on Natasha Harvey's shower?"

Relief seemed to flash across his face, unknowing that this was only the beginning, like they were letting him into something slowly, and his DNA under her nails would be brought up soon.

"I work for the hotel… I'm a maintenance man… I was on call that night… she called me in at about six-thirty in the morning to fix her shower… she was trying to have one and it wasn't working…"

Beckett raised an eyebrow slightly, "And would you say, Mr McGarvey, that after you'd fixed the shower you left Ms Humphrey in perfectly good health; and what time would you say that was?"

He smiled slightly, and even Castle could read on his face that he thought he'd got away with it; he was already taking this as a victory.

"Yes I did… and it would have been about… I dunno, I guess… ten to seven?"

There was silence for a moment, and Ted McGarvey seemed to read something in the absence of any sound, and the smile on his face was slowly disappearing, and he didn't seem to want to meet Beckett's eyes anymore, he was finding something very interesting about his hands.

And Beckett leant forward, her jaw set, something behind her eyes, the anger she longed to one day give the man that'd organised her mother's death.

"How do explain then, the fact that it's your DNA under her fingernails?"

His face fell, and it was defeat Castle was reading on it now, like he didn't have the energy left to start denying anything anymore.

There was silence again for a moment, and then he looked up, and, surprisingly there were tears in his eyes. "Before I tell you, I'd like you to know something…" he said so quietly it was almost a whisper, "My daughter Cora was raped four years ago… by a man she'd never met, a man in a bar… Judge Humphrey was the Judge in her case… they didn't find the man guilty, Detective… that animal just walked away… and Cora… Cora didn't last long after that… she killed herself just under a year later and I…"

Beckett could see that as maybe one of the best motive's she'd ever seen, and it was rare a suspect could tell her a story in the interrogation room that would make her actually stop and think, feel sorry for someone, but she still needed justice. Natasha Humphrey hadn't been the rapist, Natasha Humphrey hadn't deserved the end she'd had, and she had a daughter Beckett had to give the answers to.

"Mr McGarvey… tell us what happened…"

_Ted was running his hands through his hair, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he knocked the door… he'd been called at about six thirty to fix a shower, and he had been due his on-call time for a while, he had had most of the night's sleep, this wasn't too bad. Not at all._

_And then the woman answered the door, and everyone knows the feeling of frustration when you know you recognise someone from somewhere, but you can't work out where. He was feeling that, but she looked so different, in her pyjamas, a big smile on her face, her face void of any makeup, that he couldn't make the link that quickly._

"_Sorry." She smiled, "I tried to shower a few minutes ago and it's not working… only stone cold water's coming out of it…"_

_Ted sighed… this was the third or fourth one of these they'd had in the last few weeks. "We've had a few of these… we need to get our plumbing looked at really… I'll have it fixed in a few minutes…"_

"_Oh, thank you." She grinned, "I've gotta get onto work, and I need to shower…"_

_He smiled and headed to the bathroom, and started on the job, which he nearly knew with his eyes closed now, he'd done it so many times. It was something about her saying that, __**work**__, that made him think it as he did the job. He was visualising her with a little bit of make-up on, and formal wear, and a pair of glasses… and something was making him see her in a long gown, sitting behind a desk…_

_That was when he realised, and for a moment he just sat there, staring down at his hands. She was Judge Humphrey, the woman that had resided over Cora's rape case, which felt like so long ago now… and the man had gotten away… the woman hadn't stepped up and given him any form of punishment for ruining Cora's life… for taking it to the horrible, messy and early end it took. He swallowed then, someone slightly different taking him over, the only vision he had behind his eyes Cora, swinging from the rafters in their house, her skin grey pale, that thick, threatening looking rope around her neck._

_He stepped out of the bathroom._

"_Judge Humphrey?"_

"_Yes?" she said without looking up, and kept looking down at her file for a second, and then she looked up, going pale, "How do you know my name?"_

_He gritted his teeth. "You were the Judge on my daughter's rape case. Cora McGarvey, 2008. The man walked away. How can you live with yourself?"_

_She sighed, putting the file down. "It was a difficult case, Mr McGarvey. There wasn't enough evidence for the jury to convict the perp… I'm sorry…"_

"_Sorry's not good enough, is it?"_

"_I can only do my best, try as hard as I can to serve justice whenever possible…"_

"_There was no justice for Cora, not when she hanged herself…" he shouted, and he was walking towards her, and she was turning paler. There was something about this whole situation that made her feel threatened. _

"_I am sorry…"_

"_You're not sorry! You never saw how the life left her eyes, how she wasn't our baby girl anymore…"_

_Then, in seconds, he was right by her, and he pulled her roughly up from the bed, and she could read something in his eyes that terrified her, something almost predatory, and he took her by the neck forcefully, and held her up against the wall. He watched, with some sort of grim satisfaction, as her face got redder and redder, and she was gasping for breath, and then suddenly, almost too easily, there was silence, and she was looking at him, but she wasn't seeing anything anymore. _

_That was when he dropped her body to the floor, allowing himself to think that Cora would be endlessly ashamed of him._

There was a slightly higher level of satisfaction that any of case as Beckett clamped the handcuffs over his wrists, shaking her head. It was terrible, and it would never stop being that, but she'd gotten Rachel Dean the answer she'd been wanting, so that was enough for now.

* * *

"She always talked about how hard she found that case…" Rachel sighed, still holding her father's hand, but looking a little more relaxed now someone was going down for her mother's murder, "She said they knew it was the guy, there was something about him that made her _know _he was the rapist, but they didn't have the evidence…"

"It was never her fault, though… it was a jury that acquitted the guy in the end…"

"I know." She shook her head, "I won't feel right… not for a long time, maybe never again… but somehow I feel better now…"

As they went to leave the house, Andrew Dean was letting them out, and he stopped them for a second.

"I'd always loved her, but after a while… after you suppress those feelings for long enough, because she's just a friend, she's better than you… the longer you wait, thinking _one day _over and over to yourself and not having the courage to cross the gap… and then all of a sudden it's over, all of a sudden I'll never see her again, and I never had the chance to tell her how I felt, in all those years…"

For a moment both Castle and Beckett were speechless, thinking hard about what Andrew had just, the familiarity they had with it.

"I'm sorry." Castle said slowly, taking a deep breath, reiterating to himself that Beckett didn't feel that way about him. She hadn't told him what had happened for months because she wasn't where he was. He was on his own.

"It's alright. I'm being strong for Rachel right now. I'll avoid thinking about it until I have to."

He sighed slowly, and forced a false smile on his face.

"Goodbye, Mr Dean." Beckett said quietly, and they both walked out of the door, the case closed, fairly quickly, relative successfully… but for some reason it still felt like there was something that hadn't been finished.


	6. like a thief in the night

**Well, this is the last one. And my chapter completely devoted to the Caskett... I hope it's sufficient, and you all enjoy it. Thank you so much, all of you, for all the feedback in this fic, it's been amazing... it's what every writer wants. Here's the last chapter...**

Six – like a thief in the night 

It was only really about half an hour before they were sitting in her lounge, drinking wine, but it felt like hours… there'd seemed to have been a lot to do, closing the case, sending McGarvey off to the temporary jail, all the paperwork to be filed away for tomorrow.

Castle took a long drink, and gave a large sigh, and Beckett, distracted by whatever was going on on the news, on the television screen, turned to look at him.

"What is it?"

He sighed slowly, looking at her, and he couldn't help but notice in that second that they were sitting slightly closer than they usually did. "I can't stop thinking about it… and I feel sorry for McGarvey… he lost everything, he lost his wife, his daughter killed herself… I just… if anyone ever laid a finger on Alexis, it would be the bastard I'd be strangling, not the judge…"

Beckett nodded slowly, thinking about how unjust it had been, how in the end, it was the jury that had made that decision, not Natasha. She poured herself another glass.

"In the end, because Harold Grey attacked Cora, McGarvey lost everything; Andrew lost the woman he loved and Rachel… Rachel lost her mother…"

He didn't say anything to that, but put his hand over hers gently, stroking slight semi-circles with his index finger on her palm. He didn't have any words, he knew how hard Beckett had taken the whole thing, what with it seeming so similar to Johanna's murder, seeing the parallels between Rachel and herself when she was nineteen. He looked up at her, and their eyes met, and for a few moments, that was enough, neither of them needed to say anything, neither of them needed to even move. They were both reading so much in each other's eyes, Beckett reading in Castle's that he was there for her, that he would stand by her, that he understood how difficult she'd found dealing with Rachel Dean whilst the case had still been open, and Castle reading in Beckett's so much relief that it was over, some sympathy for McGarvey in what he'd suffered, but an inability to understand how he'd tried to deal with it. In that moment, he was not even thinking about what he heard her say through the interrogation glass… he was not even thinking about the fact that she heard his every word when she was laid on the grass in the graveyard. All he could think about was the words Andrew Dean said to them as they left, how suddenly and unexpectedly Natasha Humphrey had been torn from the world.

He didn't think, then. He just leant forward and pressed his lips to hers.

It was almost clumsy, that first kiss, and neither of them moved, he held his breath thinking that he'd thrown everything they'd built into their friendship in the last four years down the toilet, that she'd made it clear with her lies to him that she didn't feel the same way, he was ruining everything. After a few moments, he pulled back, looked slightly ashamed, slightly guilty.

"Castle… What the hell was that?" she whispered, but she didn't pull back, and his arms were still around her, encasing her. To put it simply, she just looked slightly confused. She cocked her head to one side, as if looking at Castle from a slightly different angle would give her more answers, but nothing came to her.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet and nervous, not like she'd ever heard it before. "What Andrew said… got me thinking… I don't want something to happen to one of us and you not know how I feel about you…"

Her eyes widened slowly, and she bit her lip, and if it was in any other situation, Castle would think about how tantalising she looked when she did that, but he couldn't think about anything else in that second, other than how he'd ruined everything. He did a lot of things, Richard Castle, but he never did anything by halves, so he might as well get all the truth out now, and he said it quickly, as if pulling off a Band-Aid.

"I love you, Kate, and I know you heard it… and I know you don't feel the same way… I just needed you to know… I couldn't have anything like last summer happening to either of us and you not knowing the truth…"

There were tears in her eyes, and he wasn't sure how he should take that… was that a good thing, or a bad thing? He didn't let himself stop talking, though.

"Now, I can walk out of here now and we can pretend this never happened, or…"

"Or?" she raised her eyebrows, still too in shock to have much volume in her voice.

"Or… you will probably kick my ass. Or slap me. Or something along those lines."

And then she did the thing he least expected, in the whole world. She leaned forward, and she kissed him again.

"That wasn't quite the 'or' I was going for…" she leant her forehead against his, and smiled slightly, kissing the side of his jaw as she spoke. "You don't have a clue how I feel… I shouldn't have kept that from you, I should have had something to say back to you, I'm sorry, Rick, I… I've just been scared for a long time, I've been too much of a coward to tell the truth, and I've been doing too much thinking about what _this _between us might ruin if it doesn't work… I'm sorry… and nothing's gonna happen to either of us, you know that, right?"

He only gave her a half smile, because for a second, she sounded like a parent reassuring a child, and it was still too soon after her shooting in the cemetery to talk like that. Castle knew how things just turned up, anything could happen, any day.

"Something nasty's already happening to me. I'm hallucinating you, and you're not kicking me out on my ass."

"No." she smiled, and leant forward and kissed him again. "It's been a difficult case, Castle, and maybe I've had a bit too much of that wine, but this… well, I think I've been waiting for this…"

She leant right into him then, climbed into his lap, and in moments, he had forgotten what they were having a conversation about, he had forgotten everything.

And then they both lost themselves, together.

**And I would really like one last review, if you've got five minutes... and hope all of you liked it...**


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